


To Love a Hero

by Beech27



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - Civil War, Angst and Tragedy, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 07:12:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3719866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beech27/pseuds/Beech27
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love promises a future.</p><p>War demands it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Love a Hero

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by and based on 'Korra, Don't Be a Hero', by Jennawynn. With permission. 
> 
> http://thejennawynn.tumblr.com/post/115528078689/korra-dont-be-a-hero

The sound came first. Music from horns and drums. It was a celebration for victories presumed, but not yet won. Though people were saying it was a done thing, or as good as. Asami heard them, standing by the side of the road. The South would defeat the North because the South was in the right. Justice would be done. Asami didn’t correct them, though she knew things were not so simple as that. Knew things were never so simple as that. Justice didn't have a voice in these affairs, and anyway, she knew the technology and industry the North possessed, and the logistical challenges presented by this Civil War. She knew, because she was to remain here, draw up fighting machines, guide both infrastructure and manufacturing. Wars were fought by men and women, face to face, trading blood. But wars were won with railways, shipyards, and factories.

Korra told her that this morning, and every morning preceding. For how long, Asami could not rightly say. Since war had begun to look inevitable, probably. That’d been months ago. If Asami thought about it with just a fraction of her mind, she could recall the date it was made official, maybe even recall a few lines from the declaration itself. But she could only think of Korra. In hushed whispers in the breaking dawn, Korra told her that this was the way of things. In hoarse shouts under starry skies, Korra had argued against every protest. In every way and every moment in between, Korra spoke of duty, loyalty, honor, and family. She was just a soldier, and did not speak of choices, because war gave none.

They would be silent then for a good while and they would hold one another. There was nothing left to say and yet Asami always found words. “Just promise you’ll come back to me.”

Korra always promised her that she would. Always meant it. Always squeezed Asami tighter then, pressing their bodies and lips together. It wasn’t a promise she could rightly give, nothing she could control. But those words were all she had, and so she gave them regardless. It was enough.

They would smile and fall into one another. There was no war. Nothing but this, and it was perfect.

“I love you,” Asami would say.

“I love you,” Korra would say.

And Asami believed in their future.

Footsteps came then, softened by the snow, but there were too many to silence completely. A vision of the halberds followed next, breaking the horizon and shining in the noonday sun. The blades reflected the light and so did the snow, and it looked like bright glory itself came marching down the road towards Asami and the gathered crowd.

People clapped and they cheered and they shouted, and the din swallowed up the footsteps and the crashing together of the armor as the soldiers walked down the road, marching irrevocably towards all those words Korra always spoke of. The people here beside the road used those same words. They spoke of loyalty and honor, and they smiled as they did. They said those things and a thousand others, but they did not speak of war in name. They did not say the word, as if, in leaving it unsaid, they could unmake the terrible truth of it. But it was not like any other word, and there was no unmaking it. It could survive human silence because it served that final and ultimate silence.

Korra was among the soldiers, in her blues and her helmet. But Asami saw her through the wave of uniformity, and Korra pulled that helmet away, grinning at Asami in the way that she did. One corner higher than the other, and it never quite made sense to Asami - in so many ways, the consummate engineer - how perfect beauty could be found in such pronounced asymmetry. But there was no sense in love or in loving, and she’d always known that. She’d always know that to love was to invite loss, to invite pain. She’d known and yet had dared to love Korra, under those Republic City lights, where Korra had opened Asami’s eyes and her heart to the possibility of something so intense, so profound, that the threat of pain was nothing in comparison. All of that was not because of sense, but because of pure, blissful, unquantifiable nonsense. There were no equations which could tally the sum of her affections for Korra, nor could their lines of fate, woven together, be drawn on drafting paper.

Korra came to Asami, breaking from the lines, and Asami grabbed at her, pulling her into a desperate embrace. Clinging to life, to love, to this fleeting present. The tears came and they stung in that frigid air. Korra held her tighter.

The moment felt like eternity for as long as it lasted, but it did not last long. It could not. Korra was marching to war. And war did not wait.

“Korra,” said Asami, bringing their eyes level. “Be careful. Promise me you'll be careful.”

Korra’s hands drifted to the necklace she had given Asami a month before. The one that promised she would come back, and when she did, that they’d wed. That she would keep her head down, survive this miserable business, and love Asami then as she loved her now.

“I will be,” said Korra. She walked away but faced Asami still, and she smiled in her way, waving a hand goodbye. “I love you.”

“I love you,” said Asami.

And Asami believed in their future.

\-----

The war went on and Asami filled Korra’s lengthening absence with work. She did what she could, because there was nothing else to do. She directed these materials this direction, these other ones to this factory here. She noted inefficiencies in manufacturing, and corrected them. She designed things that would kill the enemy so that Korra and her kin would not be killed. The irony was not lost on her but she could not dwell on it. Korra was gone and she was fighting, and Asami could think of little else. So this was her fight but also her distraction. If the slightest portion of her mind opened to it, the possibility of Korra’s death always entered in. But Asami rejected it every time.

Still, she had seen those letters. A single soldier would come, dressed in their finest blues, and they would knock. They would knock and they would stand rigid and wait. When the door opened, there would be a shout, and then a collapse. Tears and screaming would follow. They never needed to hear the words or read them in the letter. They knew too much already.

Asami did get letters. Korra would write when she had the chance, though such opportunities were not common. And getting a letter from the front, back home, was a difficult thing. Asami knew the distance and the routes, and knew that she should be grateful for every letter she received. And she was, although it had little to do with the content. Korra would say that things were hard but she was fine, and that she loved Asami. Asami would write back to say that things were hard but she was fine, and that she loved Korra. Asami was glad for this correspondence mostly because it persisted, which meant that Korra did as well, but also because the mailman brought the letters like any other. They were placed in the box and delivered with no ceremony. His uniform was faded, somewhat dirty, and a little ragged where he walked on his slightly too-long pants. Asami liked that. She did not want to see a clean uniform bringing a letter to her.

\-----

Asami sat at her home drafting table, moving a pencil across precise lines that were yet invisible to all eyes except hers. She could draw staighter lines freehand than most anyone using an edge. People would marvel at this but she always said it was the easiest thing. She was just tracing lines. They already existed in her mind, and were projected onto that paper. All that was left to do was draw a steady hand across those impressions.

There was a knock, and her pencil-line was suddenly imperfect. One small deviation, but it looked jagged to her eyes. Jagged, and sharp. She could feel something stabbing at her chest, and maybe that was it. A cold, sharp agony, followed by a sweeping nausea.

Asami steadied herself and she walked to the door and opened it.

The uniform was a most perfect and terrible blue. It was pressed and clean and it was all wrong, this, every bit of it. Asami’s breath caught in her throat and that cold dagger in her chest melted into the hot nausea in her stomach and it all mixed into something toxic. She felt sick, so sick she might die, and like maybe she wanted to.

The solider spoke to her about heroism and bravery and handed her a letter and a case. Asami listened in between her gasping sobs but she could not make much sense of what he said. There was nothing for it and she knew that. Had always known it. There was no sense in love. No sense in it, because it invited loss, and pain. And here were both.

The soldier opened the case for Asami and there was a medal in it. She saw it, with its folded cloth underneath, and her hand reached for the necklace she already wore. Korra had given her this, and that had been enough. She had not wanted anything else from Korra except to return, and fulfill the promise made by the necklace. She had not wanted anything besides the future they promised to one another. But Korra was a hero now, and heroes did not return, did not have futures to give.

The soldier left eventually and Asami left as well, because she could not stand to be home. It was not her place but their place. And now that Korra was gone there could be no their, no collective. Everything was singular and Asami felt loss, pure and absolute. There was no pain and no nausea; there was only absence. It opened up before her like a chasm, and she plunged down into it. She cried until her tears filled that void to overflowing.

\-----

Asami sat by the sea and she did not think about death. She thought of life, of love, of Korra. She thought of her touch and her taste, her laugh and her grin. Asami sat by the sea and threw a case into the soft foam, vanishing both the medal and the letter inside into the inky black. Both told her Korra was a hero, for the way she died, and for what. To win a hill to win a battle to win a war. But Asami didn’t want a hero. She wanted their shared future. She wanted to wake up next to warmth every morning, to see Korra wipe the sleep away from her eyes, and flash that perfect grin of hers.

“I love you,” said Asami.

But there was no response. Only the sound of water against rock, the sound of erosion, of things coming slowly, inevitably apart.


End file.
